Chernobylite Complete Edition News

Weekly Report #155

But believe us, what you see in the game is just the tip of the iceberg. Come with us! We will show you around the largest vehicle cemeteries in the Exclusion Zone.

Liquidation of the Chernobyl disaster, evacuation of the population, decontamination of the vicinity of the power plant and the 30-kilometer zone, construction of the Sarcophagus - these are just some of the tasks that required the involvement of over half a million people. A huge number of vehicles was also needed to conduct those operations. Today, many of them rest near Chernobyl and Pripyat, covered with rust, irradiated, unfit for use.

There are quite a few places where you can find large concentrations of abandoned vehicles in the Zone. One of the more famous is the vehicle graveyard “Buriakivka” in Chernobyl, some 4 kilometers from the power plant. This place was the main drop point for irradiated equipment immediately after the explosion.

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"Buriakivka" was put into operation in 1987. It owes its name to the village of Buriakivka, whose inhabitants were resettled to neighboring areas after the disaster at the nuclear power plant. The burial place of the vehicles was designated and developed by scientists from the Leningrad Institute. They used drawings of designs of above-ground radioactive waste repositories as blueprints for Buriakivka. The choice of location wasn’t random either. The village is located at a sufficient distance from water bodies and settlements and it meets all the strict requirements for the storage of radioactive waste. In addition, “Buriakivka” was located on one of the hills, more than 20 meters above the groundwater. In the event of a crack in the shell of the repository excavation, radioactive substances would penetrate into it very slowly - for many hundreds of years.

The vehicle cemetery measures 1,200 x 700 meters, is surrounded by a fence and has 30 ditches in which many radioactive materials and equipment that took part in the liquidation are buried. The walls and bottom of the excavations are covered with a meter-long layer of compacted clay, acting as the main barrier. After having been placed in the trench, the radioactive materials were compacted with a bulldozer. The trench was then filled with another meter-long layer of clay, sprinkled with earth and planted with perennial grasses, thus fulfilling a protective function. The size of each such pit is 150 x 50 meters.

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Another storage place for the machines was located on the site of the former German airport, near the village of Rassokha. In this place, endless rows of various military equipment were stored, including military special equipment, tractors, fire engines, Mi-8 and Mi-6 buses and helicopters. According to some sources, there were over 1,600 vehicles of various types. Rassokha was originally intended to be a PVLRO (Point of Temporary Localization of Radioactive Waste). However, cleaning the machines would take a lot of time and resources, so the easiest solution was to leave them and simply wait for the radioactive decay to lower the radiation levels on their surfaces. After sufficient time has passed, the equipment was to be deactivated, restored and restored to its intended use.

Unfortunately, this is never going to happen. Since 2000, many of these vehicles have been cut up for scrap and brought to metallurgical plants in Ukraine. Some have been plundered. In 2006, the complete liquidation process of “Rassokha” began and lasted until the end of 2012. Equipment that could not be salvaged for various reasons was transferred to “Buriakivka”. On the site of the former "Rassokha" you can still find remains of vehicles cut into pieces.

We move around the country and get close to the city of Pripyat, where we come across the abandoned Yaniv railway station, also known simply as the Yanov station. The station was built in 1925 and lies in the village of Yanov (demolished after the Chernobyl disaster), south of the city of Pripyat, and is part of the Chernihiv - Ovruch railway line.

In 1986-1987, the railway line from Chernihiv to Yanov was reconstructed to serve Chernobyl personnel. The line from Yanov to Sławutycz was also electrified. In 2000, one of the tracks passing through Yanov was restored and modernized, and then used during the construction work of Shelter-2, a new sarcophagus for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

At the moment, the line is not used, it has even been partially dismantled. The entrance to the station building is now closed, but the area itself is not completely abandoned however. Currently, the station is owned by the state-owned enterprise "Chernobylservice". Also, some of the old wagons are used as houses for metalworkers. Currently, there is one main railway track, three shunting tracks and several maintenance tracks for the storage of old and rusty rolling stock.

The last point of our trip is the city of Pripyat itself. After the explosion at the power plant, the inhabitants had to leave their homes within a few days. Within a week, Pripyat, once a prosperous planned city, was deserted. Almost. Dozens of tanks, helicopters, armored personnel carriers and heavy trucks brought in by the military to help with the liquidation of the effects of the explosion at the power plant were left on the site. There are still plenty of them.

However, the most famous place where you can find wrecks of vehicles is the garage of the previously mentioned state-owned enterprise “Chernobylservice”. This is the truest museum of abandoned heavy engineering vehicles in Pripyat. Trucks, tanks and machines are slowly rusting and falling apart in the parking lot of an old garage. Previously it was a car repair shop where locals brought their Ladas and Volga cars for repair. After the explosion at the power plant, the site was taken over by the “Chernobylservice” and was used to store the vehicles that were used to clean up the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

fot. UrbEx.nl

We are not exaggerating when we call this place a museum. There you can find ZIL and MAZ-537 trucks and even the IMR-2 tank. The IMR was an armored engineering vehicle based on the chassis of the Soviet T-55 tank. It's a sight to behold.

Today, all these places look impressive - as if taken straight out of a post-apocalyptic picture. And we had the opportunity to see them with our own eyes.

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Take care, Stalkers!

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Chernobylite Enhanced Edition in Winter Sale!

[h2]Stalkers! [/h2]
On the occasion of the upcoming Christmas and New Year, we are starting a special winter sale. In this special offer you will be able to buy Chernobylite: Enhanced Edition for half the price!

But it is not everything! The 50% discount also applies to all DLCs for the game:

So if you haven't had a chance to play Chernobylite so far, now is the best time. But not much - the offer lasts until January 6th!

There's still more content to come. Check out the roadmap here.

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Weekly Report #154

[h2]Before we get to the report, a quick announcement![/h2]

We invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we will regularly publish videos dedicated not only to Chernobylite, but everything related to it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
While traveling through the Exclusion Zone in Chernobylite, you can come across the wrecks of various vehicles, from cars, trucks, to trains. Someday we will write more about transport in the area around Chernobyl, because this topic is itself fascinating. But for now, we want to focus your attention on something else. If you go to the north-western edge of the Red Forest or Pripyat Central maps, you will come across a helicopter wrecks. Some might say that we've gone a bit overboard with this "differentiation" of the map, and also, that this beautiful picture is still missing a wreck of, let’s say, a Mechagodzilla. However, believe us, the presence of these helicopters in the Zone is justified.

As is well known, the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant caused a massive fire in the reactor core, which in turn led to the release and dissemination of radioactive substances in the air. In response, the Soviet military called in an armada of Mil Mi-8 helicopters to drop radiation-absorbing materials onto the burning heap. Several hundred pilots were called in to make short flights over the power plant. It was a huge risk, because they often had to fly into the clouds of radioactive smoke coming from the inside of the power plant. At the end of the initial phase of extinguishing the fire, it turned out that the pilots received doses of radiation that were completely beyond the scale of their dosimeters and potentially lethal.

At the same time, the Ukrainian director and documentary filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko appears at the power plant site. He was granted permission by the authorities to enter the charred remains of the Chernobyl power plant in order to film attempts to seal the building's open wound caused by the reactor meltdown. He used this footage to create the documentary Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks. While reviewing the recordings, Shevchenko noticed flashes and spots on them. At first he thought it was a mere technical defect in the film material, but later it turned out that the radiation was degrading the roll of film. Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks was named "the most dangerous reel of film ever", and the camera used for filming had to be locked in a lead-lined casket and stored in one of the locked facilities near Kiev.

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It was the Shevchenko camera that captured the most shocking accident that occurred during the firefighting. During the flight to pour the extinguishing substance on Block 4, the helicopter controlled by Vladimir Vorobyov caught the propellers on the cable of the high-rise crane and fell to the ground. All crew members died on the spot.

This moment was very faithfully recreated in the HBO series Chernobyl.

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In 2017, during the disassembly of the lightweight ceiling of the engine room of unit 4 of the power plant, a fragment of the tail with broken elements of the Mi-8 helicopter's steering propeller was found. A memorial to the fallen pilots has been erected near the Chernobyl helipad. The possibility of recovering and decontaminating a fragment of the caudal fin in order to use it as a museum specimen is being considered.

Vladimir Shevchenko died in March 1987 from radiation he received while filming in Chernobyl.

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]Do you like Chernobylite? Give us a review.[/h3]

[h3]Follow our official channels to stay up to date:[/h3]

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Weekly Report #153

[h2]Before we get to the report, a quick announcement![/h2]

We invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we will regularly publish videos dedicated not only to Chernobylite, but everything related to it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
Last week we explained what chernobylite is (it turned out to be much more than a fancy name for the game). Furthermore we elaborated about the chemical effects of the explosion of the Chernobyl power plant. These are not the only curiosities we have prepared for you - expect them in the next reports ;) In today's report, we don't deviate so much from the topic of chernobylite crystals, because we used them to build something important for the whole game.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3501014738163668332?l=polish

Those of you who played Chernobylite in Early Access remember well what the fractal world looked like before the final release of the game - like a huge green space with huge crystal columns spreading across the width and length.

Of course, the appearance was the result of the evolution of our many experiments. We went from designing a large sphere for the player to walk around in (which made our testers motion sick, so the idea died as soon as it was born) to a maze full of enemies. You can read more about it below.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3019080202255987439?l=polish

However, the basis of our thinking when designing this extraordinary place was the basic assumption that the fractal world would be, as the name suggested, a fractal

From the Latin language, fractal means something "broken" and "particle" and is a relatively new phenomenon. For the first time you could read about it in Benoît Mandelbrot's book "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" published in 1982. According to the definition, this is the name of self-similar objects, i.e. those whose parts are similar to the whole, or show subtle details even in multiple magnification. Simply put: these are objects that can be infinitely complex and consist of identical structures. There are a whole lot of examples of such objects, which is why mathematicians avoid giving one specific definition. In fact, it is still the subject of polemics of scientists, so the definitions will only keep coming.

The subject of fractals is most closely related to mathematics, geography, physics and biology. This is especially visible in the last domain, because fractal structures are commonly found in nature. Examples include snowflakes, a blood vessel system, clouds, a coastline, rock formations, river water systems, lightning, or a young cauliflower flower.

Let's go back to Chernobylite. As we have already said, we assumed that the mysterious world that Igor finds himself in thanks to the physics and power of chernobylite will resemble a fractal in its structure. At first the place looked like an out-of-this-world planet, then like stretching columns like something out of a Windows XP screensaver.

But as it usually happens with "cool" ideas, everything went to hell. Nothing worked as it should, from the gameplay side it was indigestible and irritating in places, and even from the artistic side it did not look encouraging. Big changes had to be made, and for that we had to hurry. The only solution was to go back to the roots. To that end, we took scenes from Get Even where Black was going into his own mind and based on them we created a fractal world in Chernobylite adorned with chernobylite crystals.

The end result exceeded our wildest expectations.

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]Do you like Chernobylite? Give us a review.[/h3]

[h3]Follow our official channels to stay up to date:[/h3]

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Weekly Report #152

[h2]Before we get to the report, a quick announcement![/h2]

We invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we will regularly publish videos dedicated not only to Chernobylite, but everything related to it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Hello Stalkers![/h3]
In our last post showcasing the evolution of the base in Chernobylite, we took a deeper look into our archive containing materials from the early version of the game. What a trip it was! When you look back at this project and compare it with what you see today, in some places you will notice very significant differences.

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For example, tables for crafting and refining weapons. Today, they look as if they were cut out alive from a professional workshop. In Early Access, they resembled tables from our grandfather's basement where you could tweak weapons through trial and error, and maybe something would come of it.

Do you remember when fractal worlds used to consist of green rectangular crystals? When you looked at them from a distance, you could get the impression that you were looking at a pile of blocks arranged in a slight disorder. Just like Jenga.

We will probably take a deeper look at all the changes that Chernobylite has undergone over the years in future reports. Of course, you can always read our previous posts, where we gave a very general overview of Chernobylite in Early Access. But if you want to learn more details about the evolution of the key elements of this project... Well, you'll have to be patient ;)

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/2983056479585199467?l=polish
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/2983057112761456541?l=polish

Today we would like to do something that we should have done from the beginning: answer the question: what is chernobylite? Sure, in interviews or somewhere in our previous materials, you could read that it is a substance that exists in reality and was created as a result of the explosion of the Chernobyl power plant. Now it's worth expanding on this idea a bit and... telling you about something else. Because believe it or not, you can come across some really interesting things when you read about the chemical effects of the disaster.

Chernobylite is a highly radioactive crystalline substance (a glassy material that resembles lava) consisting of zirconium silicate with an admixture of uranium. It was discovered in the basement of the reactor of the 4th nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, where it was created as a result of the melting of the nuclear reactor core.

However, chernobylite is not the only side effect of the events of April 1986. Shortly after the reactor exploded, attempts were made to put out the fire first with water, and then several thousand tons of sand, boron, dolomite, clay and lead were dropped from military helicopters, eventually extinguishing the burning graphite. There was still fuel inside the reactor, which had melted at 2,000 degrees Celsius. In this way, a mixture weighing about 250 tons was created, which consisted of uranium (about 190 tons), zirconium, graphite, concrete and other construction elements, as well as the aforementioned extinguishing agents.

The molten materials made their way to the bottom of the reactor vessel, and after a few days burned through its thick concrete base. Slowly cooling lava called corium occupied lower and lower rooms. There was a fear that the contamination would leak into the groundwater and lead to a gigantic ecological disaster. Therefore, it was decided to "inhibit" the substance on one of the lower floors of the reactor using ground freezing techniques. Thus, it was possible to stop the corium at an altitude above the groundwater level.

Half a year after the catastrophe, the exact location of the corium was established during the construction of the sarcophagus. In one of the rooms, a massive fragment of it was found in the form of a solidified, gray-orange mass that looked like an elephant's foot. Hence its name. "Elephant foot" was an extremely radioactive substance - staying in its vicinity for more than a minute was enough to cause severe radiation sickness, and more than 4 minutes meant certain death after a few days. People taking a picture of this phenomenon put their lives and health at risk.

Over time, the radiation level of the "elephant foot" has decreased (now it takes about an hour to be near it to receive a lethal dose of radiation), but it still remains one of the most radioactive and dangerous objects in the Chernobyl zone. Removal of such a huge corium deposit is impossible, and it is not known whether it will be possible to do so in this millennium!

As you can see, Chernobylite entertains and teaches. You've seen it before, and here's another proof.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3257812203964904878?l=polish
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/3257812203965033370?l=polish
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1016800/view/5104290054745701595?l=polish

[h3]That's it for today![/h3]
Take care, Stalkers!

[h3]Do you like Chernobylite? Give us a review.[/h3]

[h3]Follow our official channels to stay up to date:[/h3]

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